


there is still light (despite the darkness)

by thetaserpentis



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Jemma Simmons Has PTSD, Jemma Simmons Needs a Hug, Jemma Simmons-centric, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Recovery, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:42:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27234424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetaserpentis/pseuds/thetaserpentis
Summary: "Survivor stories have always fascinated me- how they got through it. [...] One hiker was stranded on Mount Hood for six nights in the snow, said her faith saved her- that and the thought of all the loose ends she left behind, the people she cared about. She never gave up hope.""I did."ORPTSD is a word that rattles around her head the same way hypoxia does. She knew about it, learned about it, thought about it, and now that it’s here, in her world, she has to deal with it. But words in concept are always so vastly different from the actual thing itself. Knowing about hypoxia didn’t help Jemma much in application, and now, knowing the symptoms of PTSD did not make it easier to deal with them.
Relationships: Bobbi Morse & Jemma Simmons, Jemma Simmons & Agents of SHIELD Team, Jemma Simmons & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons, Will Daniels/Jemma Simmons, to be clear i am a fitzsimmons shipper and this is a fitzsimmons fic
Comments: 11
Kudos: 46





	there is still light (despite the darkness)

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Jemma Simmons is my absolute favorite character ever, so I wrote sat down and spat out as many words as I could exploring her journey throughout Season 3. This is mostly a character study, and this fic mainly focuses on Jemma's PTSD and guilt, her relationship with Will, and her eventual relationship with Fitz. It's all canon compliant, although since her PTSD is more focused on it may seem out of character? 
> 
> No beta reader, so the atrocious grammar is mine. If you make it through all 11k words, thank you so much! Please let me know what you think etc etc
> 
> (Also the "You are worth more than what you can give to other people" line is not mine! It comes from She-Ra on Netflix.)

At some point they wash her hair. Jemma doesn’t remember very much of the sequence of events. She doesn’t necessarily like that, always preferring to be constantly aware and constantly thinking, but extenuating circumstances means that Jemma must make peace with her confusion. She doesn’t know if it's because she had fallen asleep or if it was because her mind had blocked it all out. It must have been both, Jemma thinks, a mixture of her exhaustion, sensitivity, and overstimulation.

Returning was such a painful blur. She could barely register anything besides the sand and dust in her lungs and in her eyes and all over her skin. She was beyond exhausted, and there was someone’s skin on hers- arms wrapped around her frame. It’s smoother, cleaner, than Will’s skin, and Jemma knows that grip instinctively. She knows it’s Fitz, but it feels as unfamiliar as it does familiar.

The air was hard to breathe, and it made her dizzy. The gravity left her feeling untethered, but it also made her feel like her body weighed a ton. It was so hard to move and think. There was so much noise- so many overlapping voices, and Jemma doesn’t know how she could ever stand it in her previous life. How could she hear all these tones and inflections and consonants and understand it all?

She remembers Mack, because he was the one who had gathered her up and cradled her and dragged her out of that dark room. And when they stepped out into the daylight, it was so bright and blinding that Jemma cried. Someone covered her eyes, but the image of the sun- a blinding ball in the sky that burned her corneas and forced its way behind into every piece of her mind- that stayed long after.

It stays with her, and so does the creeping, burning feeling of warmth on her skin that only a star (so close, only 149.6km away) could mimic. She stores these sensations, and she waits.  
At some point they wash her hair.

She’s never seen such a ginormous aircraft before. (She never was lucky enough to see the helicarrier.) Someone’s hand is still shading her eyes, but she sees the sleek, black outline of the plane, and the interior is so spacious, it makes her feel small. They pass her around like a rag doll. She spends the most time in Mack’s arms- the most capable of carrying her, she supposes. The other half of the time she spends in different seats. She vaguely wonders what kind of airplane would have a bathtub on it.

Jemma means to help, but whatever was holding her together for the past six months has self-destructed. Once it has left, it brings down everything like a caving building. The adrenaline had built a home in her body, in every nerve, every bone, every muscle, every part of her mind. Despair lived and breathed and ate and slept with her for months, and it clings stubbornly to her body, stretching and pulling and bringing things crashing to the ground as it tries to finally leave.

So Jemma doesn’t help in the end. Skye goes to find some clothes, and Bobbi carries her off. There are a lot of people touching her now- medics checking her pulse, lab techs handing her respirators- but Jemma still feels unsteady. She still feels like she’s reaching and reaching for Fitz’s hand.

And when Jemma is sitting on the edge of the tub as Bobbi fills it up, fighting against every instinct in her body that tells her to let go and fall, Jemma reaches out for Fitz’s hand.

“I’ll be back. Promise,” he says, “Just need to, uh, get you cleaned up. And then I’ll be back.”

“A bath will feel good,” Bobbi says, but Jemma hears it like it’s so far away- like it’s just some echo. She reaches, and eventually, Fitz grabs her hand and settles next to her. It feels easier, then, to sit up. He is so solid- so unlike shifting sand- and suddenly, Jemma thinks she can be here, really be here, instead of there.

(Jemma tries so hard to not remember- to not remember the sand and the wind and the monster and _Will_. She tries to not remember because it will scare her and hurt her and make her tremble, but it will make her want to go back.)

For now, Jemma holds Fitz and waits. The bathroom is too bright, and Jemma must say that aloud because eventually the lights are dimmed, but Jemma doesn’t remember Fitz leaving her side. “Where are we?” Jemma asks, because she still doesn’t understand, and she’s exhausted, but Jemma hates not understanding. Fitz rattles off some facts, and Jemma catches about half of them. It’s called the “Zephyr” and it’s… big. It’s been adapted so living in the air would be possible- like the Bus but better. Bobbi compliments Fitz, and Jemma feels herself slipping again.

She had spent so much time wishing to go home, and now that she is here, it feels unfamiliar. She recognizes her friends’ faces, but they’re minutely different. It’s like Jemma had come home but to a slightly shifted dimension. But it’s not all unfamiliar. It feels like- breathing this air and feeling this weight- Jemma’s body remembers that it is not supposed to feel this way. It is not supposed to feel this hungry. It is supposed to crave Vitamin D and protein and water and glucose. She searches desperately for the strength that had possessed her body when she saw Fitz’s flare soar through the air (a bright red scar against the blue of the planet) but she cannot find it.

When Skye returns and the bathtub is filled, Fitz gets up to leave, but Jemma tightens her grip on his hand. She wills all her strength into it. His hand has a solid weight so unlike the hands that ghosted around Jemma’s dreams, and she remembers the tug- the pull of Fitz dragging her out of a hell, and it tethers her. “Stay,” she says, and Fitz, clinging to her every word, hears it.

“Um, are you sure?” and his question isn’t really all the way out before Jemma is nodding along.

“I want you to stay,” she whispers, but it’s loud in the silent tiled bathroom.

“Do you want us to stay?” Skye asks gently. Bobbi is standing next to her, washcloths in hand, but Jemma isn’t thinking about getting clean or bathing or any of how this could possibly logistically work. All she thinks about is how nice it is to hear the sound of their voices- their real voices- not the poor mimic that plays out the end of her phone speaker, wishing her a happy birthday.

It sends her brain into overdrive, but Jemma craves it so she says, “Stay.”

Fitz leaves to sit on the counter of the sink, twiddling his thumbs and staring holes into the tiled floor. Jemma wants to call him over, but he looks so wildly uncomfortable already. Not to mention, Bobbi and Skye seem to take up enough room themselves, attempting to help Jemma out of her clothes. She has felt such a small but powerful range of emotions recently, and she finds that embarrassment is not on that list. When she sees her tattered blouse on the floor, clothes that she had worn for six months and will never have to wear again, it’s almost too much. It reminds her of promises, of dates and hope, and of never getting any of it. She reaches for her jeans- worn down to a thin denim by the sand and the wind- and her fingers close around the small shiv she carried with her since the first day she found the water hole.

“Jemma, what…” Skye looks at her like she might be a little scared, and later that will scare Jemma too, but in the moment she revels in it. Their fear makes her feel stronger and safer.

Her grip curls tighter around the shiv, and she holds it to her chest until Fitz says, “It’s alright. You can, uh, you can keep it. If it makes you feel better.” And it does. Fitz’s eyes lock with hers for a second before he turns bright red and his gaze falls to the floor again.

At some point, Jemma lowers herself into the tub, and at some point, they wash her hair. At some point, Jemma falls asleep, but every time she wakes up, she searches for that piece of wood that stays clutched in her hand even after the rest of her body has loosened.

She lets the sensations come over her. She smells the soap- eucalyptus- gentle enough to not hurt her head but present all the same. Her skin is the smoothest it has been in so long. She relishes in the ache of her muscles that feels so good now that she does not have to protest against it. She hears them talk quietly. They don’t necessarily talk in whispers, but they do make their voices gentle, and Jemma wishes she could join them. In her half-consciousness, it’s almost like a pleasant dream- like remembering a conversation she had overheard.

The clothes they have for her are loose compared to the tight sanded down denim Jemma was used to, and the way it brushes against her skin is overwhelming. Fitz helps her out of the bathroom and into a small white room. The bed is small, but it’s firm, and Jemma silently thanks the heavens for that. She breathes slowly, and she thinks sleep will come soon. It’s the safest sleep she has felt in six months, but Jemma still holds the shiv in her hand, tight enough to leave imprints, because when she wakes she knows her hell will not be over. She will have to go back.

-

Jemma throws herself back into routine with as much ruthless abandon as she can manage.  
She finds that she cannot do very much.

Jemma’s bed is too big and too soft. It’s nothing like the hard cot that Jemma had used on Maveth, and at first she thinks it will be a welcome change, but she wakes up when she’s halfway to sleep, gasping for air as she feels herself sink into the mattress like quicksand. She thinks that she wouldn’t be able to sleep with the lights off, and she’s correct, but then her nights consist of her lying on her back, staring up at fluorescent white lights until her eyes burn.

Jemma used to hate showers after what happened in the medpod, and over the last year she had learned to cope and enjoy them again. Now she is back at square one for vastly different reasons. It’s loud. Everything is loud. The lab is too loud. There are too many machines and too many people.

Jemma’s always hated new people. She thinks of the last time bitterly. She hated returning from Hydra to a brand new base full of brand new people who simultaneously expected something from her and overlooked her completely. She hates it still, her previous experience doing nothing to prepare her. She hates being the new girl despite the fact that she’s been here longer than any of the new lab techs. She hates that the organizational system seemed to have shifted in her time away. Jemma always loved the versatility of humanity- how things were never quite static and evolution was a constant presence, but Jemma always thought she would be able to be there to witness it or experience it. Now it just seems like a cruel reminder.

Bobbi is strong enough to go on a mission, May is back from an extensive vacation, new inhumans could be found on every continent, Skye goes by Daisy now, and Fitz doesn’t stutter anymore. Jemma is happy. She’s happy that Bobbi is no longer in a hospital bed, and she’s happy that Skye or Daisy seems to have found herself, and she’s happy that Fitz no longer trembles when he works with wires, but Jemma wishes she could have been there for it.

And even as she is here now, she cannot experience it, because her mind is still in that other place. She cannot play catch-up. She does not climb the uphill slope that her friends seemed to have found, because she is too busy trying to go back.

When everything is too loud, Fitz takes her to a restaurant that should be perfect. She’s imagined it so many times, and she wants so badly for it to be perfect, but she finds, as badly as she wants to be, she is not really there. She is still on Maveth.

“You’re so strong, Jemma,” she hears. She hears it from Skye-Daisy, and she hears it from Fitz and Bobbi. When she sees Hunter again, she hears it from him too. She hears it from Dr. Garner, and as a professional, Jemma considers taking his opinion sincerely, but even he does not know the truth about what happened, and therefore, his assessment is incomplete. None of them know about Will, and if they did, Jemma knows they wouldn’t call her strong. If Jemma Simmons was really strong, she would have dragged him through that portal with her.

So she doesn’t tell them. The others move at a speed that Jemma cannot keep up with. They rush around her, move in and out of her vision, and Jemma can do nothing but stand still. They lead their busy lives that Jemma cannot participate in, and she holds onto her pain and her guilt and her suffering alone. She wills herself to go back.

-

Before Jemma was taken, she didn’t see the sun for 36 hours. The time immediately following the inhuman war was so packed and busy, and the base has so few windows, especially near the labs located underground. The closest she had gotten to sunlight in those 36 hours was a visit to Coulson’s office (the windows were a safety issue for sure) but by then the sun was already low in the sky, invisible to the East-facing windows.

After Jemma was taken, she didn’t see the sun for 4,722 hours.

She hadn’t realized how much she missed it until she saw it again.

They are hesitant to leave her alone most of the time. There are always careful glances and watchful eyes, and Fitz and his hands are a constant presence. Jemma doesn’t mind it. She likes it in fact, but eventually they would have to separate. Fitz would leave to do lab work, and Jemma, still wary of that place, would hole up in her room. There she would try to make as much out as she could from what little concrete information she had about the monolith’s origins.

When she ventures out of her room, it’s raining. The storm is bad enough to where the thunder could be felt in some of the underground floors of the base. Jemma finds that despite her progress, she is still easily startled and frustratingly distracted. She doesn’t expect anyone to be in the kitchen, but a quick glance at the clock tells her that it is late enough in the evening for dinner. Usually, Fitz would have been back by then, and he would insist on getting something to eat. They would go to the kitchen together, and Jemma would grab something bland like porridge or toast since her stomach was still so sensitive to flavorful foods. He must have been especially busy, and Jemma finds herself frowning again. How much had he taken on in her absence? How much is he still taking on?

Thunder rolls over the base again, and Jemma feels it in the floor. “Wasn’t me,” Daisy jokes. Mack shakes his head, and she throws a grape in the air to catch it in her mouth. Jemma wants to join their conversation. She wants to understand the manners of their relationships with ease. Instead, she drags a kettle out from the corner and heats up some water. She could make tea- make herself and Fitz tea- since Fitz was likely wanting some after working this late into the evening.

“Jemma,” Mack says, and despite her best efforts, Jemma tenses. She bristles like a porcupine, and she doesn’t necessarily know why. Mack is a good man, and though they’ve had issues in the past, he’d certainly never hurt Jemma. Jemma truly doesn’t believe that anyone on this base would hurt her or hunt her, but she still bristles at his voice like he’s the scope of a shotgun and she’s the deer.

“Jemma?” Daisy says, and she sounds more tentative than Mack had. Jemma turns on her heel to face them, and she smiles tersely. They seem concerned now. The easy-going air between them has dissipated, and Jemma feels sorry for deflating their conversation. “You wanna play Mario Kart with us later?”

Jemma blinks and her mind scratches and goes blank like an Etch-a-Sketch. She wasn’t expecting that sort of question considering the apprehension on their faces. “Oh.”

“It’s pretty rare for all of us to get a night to ourselves, so… video games?” Daisy’s hair is short now, Jemma notices. It frames her face so differently than the bangs had. “Jemma?”

The kettle starts to whistle, and she turns around quickly, words tumbling clumsily over her lips. “Oh yes, that sounds fun, Daisy.” Jemma knows she is busy. She has the monolith and Will to worry about. But she also knows that the others worry over her like she is a fragile heirloom. Jemma is a fragile heirloom; she doesn’t serve any real purpose now, but she had been something of meaning in the past, and so they try their best not to break her based on some imagined worth. Well, as true as Jemma finds the sentiment, she does her best to quell their worries. It would benefit the both of them in the long run. “I’ll be there,” Jemma says. She fills two mugs with water, and steam curls around Jemma’s fingers. “What time?”

“We usually start pretty late so Hunter can join. He never does his chores on time-”

“Coulson’s getting desperate. Never thought you’d have to ground a full grown man-”

“So nine o’clock probably.” She watches Daisy and Mack and tries to discern when they had become so close. When she was away, she thinks, it’s always when she’s away. Jemma picks up a mug in each hand, and she tries to give Daisy a convincing display of excitement. From the look on Daisy’s face, she’s failed. Jemma knows she’s improved immensely at lying, but she is, apparently, still a bad actor. “If that’s too late-”

“I’m not an infant, Daisy. I can stay up past my bedtime,” Jemma tries for reassurance and misses the mark completely. Daisy’s tentative smile falls, and Jemma finds that she’s a little indifferent to the reaction. It was doing no good for either of them anyways- the little pleasantries- it just wound them up into tense caricatures of themselves. “I just mean that it’s been weeks. I’ve rested, you know. I’m putting on weight again. It’s not the same.”

“No one’s denying the progress you’ve made,” Mack begins. Jemma’s never cared very much for Mack’s speeches in the past, and she finds out quickly that she still doesn’t. He tended to speak in a tone with such confidence in what he said or observed or thought that it could almost come off as condescending. Jemma doesn’t necessarily feel that way about Mack’s speech now, but she does think that he’s completely missed her point in this situation.

Jemma knows she’s not quite as likable or conversational as she used to be. She knows her ideas are a little harder to get across now that trauma has rewired her brain, but it’s frustrating to see herself misunderstood. She feels like a third party observer, standing on the sidelines of her own conversation, yelling at herself to say the right thing, and watching herself fail spectacularly.

“Nine o’clock is fine,” Jemma says abruptly. She feels bad for interrupting Mack. She feels bad for holding ill feelings towards Mack, because he’s been nothing but kind and understanding in these past few weeks, but these moments make Jemma want to claw her way out of her own skin. It’s in these moments that Jemma feels the disconnect more than ever, like she’s on a slightly different plane of existence from the others and couldn’t get anything across. “I’ll see you then.”

Jemma is about to make her exit when Daisy says, “Coulson probably misses you, you know. He’s been really busy, but he’ll want you to visit sometime.”

Jemma thinks about responding, but she doesn’t necessarily trust herself entirely to say the right thing, so she just smiles briefly and leaves. She does think about visiting him. The tea is too hot, and knowing Fitz, he would drink it all quickly nonetheless, and so she should let it cool for a moment. She could visit Coulson, inquire about his arm, and finally, bring the tea down to Fitz.

She wants to see the arm anyways. Fitz is an amazing engineer, but Jemma is still surprised he could make such an amazing neuroprosthetic considering his knowledge in biology and anatomy was not quite as advanced as hers. Jemma tries to not think about that bitterly either. She is always thinking about things bitterly now, but she can’t help but wonder if she had any use here after all if Fitz could take on her role so easily. She should know by now to never doubt Fitz’s expertise (he is a genius after all) but it still aches a little to know her own uselessness.

Perhaps, if she sees Coulson’s prosthetic, she could improve on it in some way. Perhaps, she could make it more realistic in nature. Fitz, of course, probably made the hand entirely functional, but if Jemma's purpose is entirely aesthetic, it is still a purpose. She thinks it will be nice to have another project on her plate besides the monolith alone. It’s important in science to keep a fresh mind, and if Coulson’s hand keeps herself from digging her own grave then so be it.

In the end, Jemma never makes it to his office. The rain had ceased to a gentle pattering, and the sound of raindrops on the window is so familiar that it scratches something in Jemma’s overactive mind. It’s one of those things that Jemma knows but doesn’t quite know that she knows. It’s like the smell of lemon ginger tea, the way glossy textbooks reflected light, or the way wet moss felt under her heel. Everything is different, and Jemma is a stranger to her own thoughts, but the sound of rain on glass is the same, so Jemma approaches the window at the end of the hallway and listens.

She doesn’t remember the last time she’s been outside. The cars driving in the streets below catch her eyes- their headlights like little eyes in the dark. Jemma has a sudden urge to leave the base. She remembers being little, sitting in the back seat of her parents’ car, and she remembers the gentle vibration as they drove through fields. She remembers the state of half-consciousness that always came with spending hours in the car, staring out the window and wondering about the grass and the soil and the water cycle. It’s been so long since Jemma’s been in a car like that, and she wants to drive aimlessly for hours. She imagines herself in the passenger seat, head leaning against the window, and she sees Fitz (who else but Fitz?) in the driver’s seat. She imagines him driving until she is almost asleep.

Her wrists hurt from carrying the mugs, and Jemma sets them down on the ledge. The brick of the base’s walls is rough and sharp at the corners, and Jemma is working on welcoming new sensations again, so she lets herself run her fingertips over the brown-red surface and the smooth cement in between.

Time passes, and the clouds pull back slowly. She had expected the storm to go on for the rest of the night, but once the rain had lightened into nothingness, the clouds receded with incredible speed. And once the gray cover is gone (stratocumulus clouds, Jemma thinks) the sun appears from behind it.

Jemma thinks the sun looks like it might be bleeding. It glows a bright red, orange shade, and the color expands outward from the center. It’s light covers the wet sidewalks and makes the water in the streets shine. It heats up the windows until even Jemma, contained in the base, could feel it too. It’s a gentle warmness, and Jemma wants more. She wants to feel the burning on her skin of hot, summer afternoons. She’s always had her favorite star, but for a moment she thinks it should have been the sun.

Jemma doesn’t think about how long she’s been there. The sun descends in the sky, but it seems to glow brighter as it reaches the horizon. The clouds leave, and the sun turns that bright yellow that hurts to look at, and Jemma stares straight into the center until her vision spots. She waits for her corneas to burn. When the edge of the circumference of the sun hits the horizon, it dims again, and Jemma realizes with a start that she will not see it again until tomorrow.

She knows she’s been going insane (sleepless, manic nights; feeling like a stranger in her own body; small noises sending her mind into overdrive) but she doesn’t expect the sunset to set her off. The very idea of it fills Jemma with dread.

She knows when the anxiety hits because it comes all at once. Once it crosses her mind in a millisecond that the sun might leave for a while, it hits her like a wave. It doesn’t always come like this. Sometimes it is a gentle undercurrent that follows her throughout her day, but today it crashes around her chest (in a movement reminiscent of the monolith) and encases her heart. It holds her heart tight in its grip, and it feels like the air in her lungs is moments away from breaking out of her chest. Her head tingles, and the tears feel useless, but they threaten to come anyways. Her bones in her fingertips feel like they belong anywhere besides within her skin.

The sun will be here tomorrow, Jemma tells herself. She wills the feeling to go away, because she knows that she isn’t there anymore, and in twelve hours, the sun will come back. All she has to do is go to sleep, and when she wakes, the sun will be there again. She tells herself this, but her feet refuse to move. The idea of leaving the windowsill, of tearing her eyes away from the horizon, sends a wave of nausea. She thinks if she turns away, she’ll vomit up the nothingness in her stomach.

So Jemma stares out the window, and she waits for the sun to come back.

It must have been hours of it. When her breathing slows, she thinks about turning away, leaving the windowsill, but then it comes crashing back down on her full force. It forces its way back up her throat, and Jemma concedes. She stays and watches. Eventually, Jemma’s name is called.

It’s called as it is often called now- with all the concern and worry and confusion that can be mustered. She doesn’t turn around, but Fitz’s footsteps are heavy, and she knows at once when he is behind her. “Everyone’s been wondering where you were.”

Jemma grimaces. She continues to stare out the window. The nausea still threatens her with a knife to her throat, and she feels a little light headed, like she might not be getting enough oxygen. Jemma catalogues it as symptoms of anxiety, and she forces herself to breathe. Her inhales and exhales are ragged, and Fitz notices because he is observant, and Jemma is one of those broken machines he has to fix. “What’re you looking at?”

She was looking at the sun, but now it’s gone, and she’s looking at nothingness. She’s looking at her breath slowly fogging up the window as the temperature drops outside. She doesn’t want to explain this much- that she’s been on the verge of a panic attack for hours over the sunset- so she digs her teeth into her bottom lip and tries to calm her heart rate.

“Is everything alright?” Jemma wishes, not for the first time, that Fitz could be more imperfect. She wishes that he wouldn’t be so attentive and caring and kind. She wishes that she could feel like she deserved him and this life that she was so haphazardly thrown back into. She wishes that Fitz would not care for her so much, because Jemma is a broken heirloom, and there is very little hope of fixing her. She wants to distance herself from him, tell him that she is absolutely fine, but Jemma is so _not_ fine that she cries instead.

And because Fitz is who he is, he hides the fact that he is scared and bewildered and anxious and frustrated, and he holds Jemma instead. He lowers her to the ground, and she tries frantically to catch her breath. She thinks she must concentrate so hard on not throwing up on him that she has little focus left to think about the sunset. When she is sure that she will not get her stomach bile all over him, her mind reminds her to look at the window, but Jemma knows there is nothing there. That sets off another round of tears, which consequently leads to even more tears of frustration.

“I think I’m going insane.” It’s the first thing Jemma can say, and it’s interrupted often by breaths and hiccups.

“You’re not going insane, Jemma.” The way he says her name- Jemma knows there must be other people out there with the same Scottish accent- but she’s never heard anyone say her name like that. It’s a brief feeling that passes quickly, but the way Fitz says it makes it feel like her name belongs to her. “You’re not going insane. This is all… this is all completely normal. For what you’ve been through, this is normal.”

Fitz doesn’t really know what Jemma went through. None of them do, but Jemma still hears the truth in his statement. It’s not something that she hadn’t thought about herself before. PTSD is a word that rattles around her head the same way hypoxia does. She knew about it, learned about it, thought about it, and now that it’s here, in her world, she has to deal with it. But words in concept are always so vastly different from the actual thing itself. Knowing about hypoxia didn’t help Jemma much in application, and now, knowing the symptoms of PTSD did not make it easier to deal with them.

“It doesn’t feel normal.” Jemma tries to wipe the snot away on her sleeve. Her tears have ceased, but the feeling of falling and falling remains. She is still that girl who jumped out of an airplane all those years ago, and she’s never really found her footing again since. “I feel like… nothing in here makes sense.”

It’s a relief when Fitz understands her. She never blames the others for struggling to follow her thought process (she only blames herself) but it still feels nice to be understood with no words. “No one’s mind makes sense, Jemma. I mean look at Hunter. His brain is supposed to work better than yours and yet-“

Jemma makes an exclamation of indignation on Hunter’s behalf. But she’s laughing, so Fitz smiles and the corners of his eyes crinkle up. Jemma finds herself thinking about those eyes. She thinks, after everything with falling through the sky and drowning at the bottom of the ocean and losing all hope on a desert planet, his eyes are the only reason she doesn’t hate the color blue.

“I made us tea,” Jemma says dejectedly. The mugs are cold now, and she frowns at the idea of pouring it down the drain. “I was supposed to bring it to you… in the lab. I was just going to…”

“What made you stop? At this window?” Fitz asks. He takes the mugs himself, politely ignoring the way Jemma had trailed off.

“Well first the rain, and then the sun, and then the sunset.” Jemma looks out the window at the stillness of the night. There are no cars passing by anymore, and the stars in the sky are still. “There was no sun when I was there.”

Jemma never talks about the other planet, so Fitz turns away from her to hide his surprise. She catches it in him the same way she catches it in all of them, but she's learned to appreciate the thoughtfulness of it at least. “The sun will be back tomorrow,” he says. Jemma doesn’t bother to say that she’s already thought of that. She finds herself getting angry more often than she’d like, and she doesn’t want to be angry with Fitz. “We can wake up early if you want, watch the sunrise.”

Jemma decides quickly that she does want that. “Do you think we could go outside?”

“We could probably get up on the roof without anyone noticing.”

Jemma is again struck by the overwhelming feeling that she does not deserve Fitz. She wonders what will become of them once she goes back to Maveth. It will hurt him, it must, but Jemma is not selfish enough to stay here. She’s not selfish enough to leave Will and make Fitz suffer as a result.

“Do you think the others are still playing?”

“What, Mario Kart? They’ll probably play until tomorrow morning. It’s a wonder how any of them can take on Hydra when they maintain the sleep schedule of fourteen year olds.” Jemma takes one of the mugs from him and fills the empty space of his hand with her own. He intertwines their fingers like it’s the most natural thing in the world- like they had been doing it their whole lives.

“We can join them? Unless you’re busy tomorrow?” Jemma has nothing much going for her schedule wise, but Fitz is always expected in the lab.

“You don’t want to go to sleep?” Jemma doesn’t understand why everyone seems so concerned about her resting. She could see the purpose of it in the beginning, but it’s been weeks since her return. If anything, Jemma is the one among them that needs the least sleep. The others have actual work. Jemma has therapy.

She doesn’t want to tell Fitz that she rarely sleeps anyways (he’d only fret) so she says, “I want to join the others.” It works well enough. He leads her away from the window, dragging her by the hand.

-

Jemma wishes that she had never told Fitz what happened. She’s dragged him down into the deep end where she was so certain she’d suffer alone. She isn’t blind and she certainly isn’t stupid, and she knows that she’s hurting Fitz again. She is beginning to view it as an inevitability. In fact, the only reason she had told him at all was because it was an inevitability. She used to think that she could never do such a thing- never hurt him- when she was young and naive and Fitz was nothing more than her best friend. And yet it seems to be a constant within the last few years that Jemma would do nothing but hurt him.

What she doesn’t understand is how Fitz can still look at her the same. He looks at the situation differently of course, but he still looks at her like she’s some ethereal being who could do no wrong. He looks at her like the beaten innocent, and Jemma doesn’t understand how he could do that when she’s done nothing but prove him wrong.

Jemma loves Fitz (as uncertain as the specific terms may be) and she does find him perfect. She thinks his mind is brilliant, and he is incredibly kind and respectful and all the good things a man should be. Jemma loves Fitz, but she thinks she’s twisted him up. She thinks he is blind with her. She has somehow twisted him up and around, because there could be no other explanation for the way that Fitz still looks at her.

She gives him her phone, and she doesn’t look over the things she had said. She doesn’t delete any of the audio files or photos or videos. She hopes that it is enough to close the growing chasm between them. She hopes that her at her most honest will be able to say what she cannot get across now.

When he visits her at the window hours later, Jemma tries to hide her relief. She missed him or misses him. It isn’t the same simple companionship that occurred after her initial return when their relationship was defined by the certainty of their love for each other, unmarred by confusion and feelings. But he stands next to her despite the things she has done, and because Jemma is a selfish creature, she does not distance herself from him.

She wonders if her messages were enough. “I talked to you all the time,” Jemma says at last, “I didn’t always record it, but… You helped me stay sane. I talked to you.”

“You told me,” he says, “In your messages. You said you’d talk to me on your own.”

Jemma tries to keep her tears at bay. She is so tired of crying- of pitying herself. “I can’t thank you enough. You keep…” Jemma wants to say ‘saving’ but she doesn’t want to recap all her past injuries against him, so she says, “helping me.”

Fitz seems to hesitate. Jemma tries to not look at him, but she knows his eyes are on her. It’s one of the newer developments that Jemma has grown to like. She likes the way he looks at her with unabashed love and care, and she hates it at the same time, because she has done nothing to deserve it. “You helped me too.” Jemma can’t help but look up. She tries to understand his words in the way she used to when everyone thought they shared one mind. “When you were at Hydra,” he elaborates, “I saw you all the time. I guess, even though you weren’t there, you did help me with my injury after all.”

His words whip the air out of Jemma’s lungs. She feels that tell tale burn behind her eyes, and she forces herself to turn away and close her mouth. It’s a sharp type of pain. She feels it like a stab at the bottom of her sternum, digging upwards into her ribcage.

It’s another reminder of all the things Jemma never was and never will be. She couldn’t help Fitz then when he needed her most. Some perfect imaginary version of her would help him, but Jemma was never going to be what people wanted her to be. She couldn’t be there for Fitz, but here he was for her, supporting her in every way possible. And after all the effort Fitz went through, she still manages to disappoint him. When Jemma looks into his eyes, she wonders if he’s really seeing her or some other idealized version of her. Was that what was happening? Fitz would keep hoping for the version of Jemma that she could have been, and Jemma would keep disappointing him with the sad reality.

The chasm between them grows steadily larger.

The chasm grows larger, but Fitz still helps her, and it sets Jemma off like a firework. She wants Fitz to yell at her- to hate her and be angry. She’s tired of this Fitz that sees her so differently than what she is. She doesn’t want this Fitz that readily throws himself into danger on her command. She wants him to hate her and to see her for the ugly thing that she is.

There are so many things Jemma wishes she could apologize for. She wants to apologize for all the things she’s done to hurt Fitz, but then, she would never apologize for loving Will the way she did.

When Fitz pulls her close to kiss her, and Jemma feels his lips on hers for the first time (a firm presence that seems to hold even more weight than the way his hand felt in hers) she chases him. She chases that feeling of safety- that feeling that Fitz seems to be able to give her no matter how large that chasm between them is.

And in the hours after the kiss, they don’t talk about it. Jemma thinks about it, and she wants nothing more than to kiss him again.

She wants him to see her truly- to hate her- but at the same time she relishes in the feeling of blissful ignorance they keep. She allows their conversations to flow on and allows him to hold her hand when she feels overwhelmed. She fears the moment that he will wake from whatever is cast between them. The truth is that Jemma is crushed by her guilt, but she wants to keep Fitz. She is selfish, and she wants to keep Fitz. But she won’t kiss him again. Jemma is not awful enough of a person to kiss him again.

-

There’s a steady numbness that sets over Jemma when she waits for Fitz to come back. Everyone else seems to be afraid. Even concern can be seen on May’s face, and yet Jemma sits in her chair with little anxiety. She lets the ache of her ribs consume her as she inhales deeply with her lungs. The others don’t talk to her. They all have their own fear to feel.

She is the first one to run down when the containment pod returns. Her heart beats rapidly against her chest, but her mind is almost radio silent. There is a gentle buzz of white noise and not much else, even as her heart pumps blood so violently it might explode. When she looks into the containment pod, she sees nobody else.

There is the sound of celebration behind her. She sees it. Daisy is kissing Lincoln and May and Coulson are hugging, and she hears traces of conversation from Hunter and Bobbi and Mack. They are all happy. It is a victory. Everyone is back safe. Everyone but Will. If Jemma could feel, she thinks she would feel angry, but it seems that she cannot feel. She goes through the motions of grieving. She feels the tears and sees the way it blurs her vision. She recognizes the curl of her lip that comes when she tries to hold back the cries in her throat. But she doesn’t feel the actual grief.

It must be too much, Jemma thinks. It must be too much. She has grieved and grieved and grieved. She has grieved the loss of her own future, grieved numerous innocent inhuman lives that died in name, but this death must be the death that breaks her.

She looks for Fitz before she collapses, and she holds him tightly until the bruises littering her arms and her torso ache and pulse. She feels something then- not grief but relief. She thinks it should be the last feeling that should be at the front of her mind, but she also thinks there is no other emotion that could possibly take its place. She holds Fitz and tries to hold onto that feeling of happiness. She is so happy. Fitz is still alive. Fitz. She repeats his name in her head until him and his smell and his arms consume her- until Fitz and the way his body presses into her bruises is the only thing that exists in her blank slate mind.

Later, they tell her the story. When her tears have dried and they return to the base, Fitz visits her room and tells her what happened to Will because she asked.

“I’m sorry, Jemma. I’m so sorry.”

Jemma almost has it in her to feel angry. She is angry at Fitz- not for what happened to Will, but for his stupidity. How he could blame himself is beyond her. Jemma knows it’s not Fitz’s fault that Will died. She knows because Will was dead a long time before Fitz showed up. Jemma knows because she is the one who killed Will in the same way she is the one who killed all those inhumans. She is the one who left Will to die on a planet he had already suffered for fourteen years on. She is the one who let Dr. Garner out of the pod to keep herself safe. If Jemma was stronger, maybe she could have saved him from the beginning. She could’ve dragged him out with her, and she could’ve fought off Hydra herself. If she were better, she would’ve found a way to go back into the portal herself. Fitz was never supposed to go there. She wanted no one to ever go onto that hellish planet besides herself. Fitz was never supposed to go, and if she had been stronger, he wouldn’t have heard her scream, and he wouldn’t have gone.

She thinks she should tell Fitz as much, but she fears that if she says it aloud he will agree. If she says it aloud, she will feel all the repercussions of truly believing it, and right now, her mind is nothing more than a whiteboard. A thought would cross her mind every now and then, and Jemma would erase it and move on. She doesn’t know how to tell Fitz and keep her sanity at the same time, so she says, “I know, Fitz,” and, “It’s okay, Fitz,” and when she can’t stand to hear his apologies and see his tears anymore, she kisses his cheek and gets up and leaves.

-

Jemma thinks it will be a band aid over a chasm, and she’s surprised to find that the chasm closes faster than it had opened.

She thinks she can start over. She remembers Will and those inhumans, and they haunt her every waking moment, but it’s different now. There’s no hope in the way that she remembers him. She is filled with arguably more self-hatred than she had been before, but before there was hope for a remedy. She had hope that she could find Will at the end of it, and she would one day be redeemed for all the bad she had done. And now there is no distraction to throw herself into, no thin hope to grasp at. There is only the weight of lives on her shoulders, and Jemma finds the certainty of the past comforting.

So she throws herself into her relationships recklessly. It’s easier now when she knows with certainty that she will never be the Jemma Simmons the world needs. She doesn’t chase the monolith and Will and the idea of redemption. She returns to her life in a way she was unable to before. She talks to May and Daisy and Mack and Bobbi, and she doesn’t spend the entire time fighting against wave after wave of anxiety and uncertainty. She doesn’t think about how long it will be before she has to leave. She is less acutely aware of every noise and every thought that passes through her mind. When she sits in the lab and works on Coulson’s new prosthetic, she sees it as a real project and not just a reset before her mind returns to Maveth.

Fitz meets her energy easily. They rest. They talk. They eat. It is so quiet now that it’s almost ominous. She plays video games and goes on missions and works in the lab. When Jemma tries to catch up, it’s with a certainty that what she is learning will matter. She understands the organizational system of the lab (which was really not as different from the original as Jemma thought) and she hears stories of all the things that happened in her time away.

She feels lonely.

She sits on Fitz’s bed sometimes, and they watch random movies on TV. He falls asleep not too far into it, and Jemma hardly pays attention. The lights are off, and their bodies are almost intertwined. Jemma can see the flutter of his eyelashes and the part of his lips, illuminated by the movie scenes. Red and orange and blue and green and white all pass over his face in flickers, and Jemma’s not quite sure when it started or why but there are tears on her face.

She feels indescribably alone. It’s bizarre and nonsensical because this is the closest she’s felt to Fitz, to the entire team, since the Bus. Their conversations feel like real conversations instead of mimicry, and Jemma is so far from the epitome of confusion she used to be. And Fitz is right there, asleep on her, curled around her like she’s a pillow, so how could she be lonely? She wants to be worthy of it- to feel like she deserves it- this very real love that she is receiving, but she doesn’t. Not even accepting this makes it easier. She feels like she is so far away from the rest of them- floating and falling and falling. They can see her and talk to her and touch her, and she can do the same back. She asks questions and holds Fitz’s hand, and she has learned to tell a joke that makes Daisy laugh. But she still can’t be with them fully. She can tell herself that she is and pretend that she is, but there is something there. She has one foot in another world, and she is so scared of being dragged back into it. She wants to stay here, like this, forever. She wants to lie down on Fitz’s bed and watch him rest with nothing but the glow of the television, but the shadows never leave her alone.

She sees Will in the dark. His face lurks, half hidden by darkness. She thinks it is awful to see him at night, when she dreams of his hands cradling her face and telling her that she is brilliant. She thinks it is awful to see him so happy and full of life, only to wake up alone in her bed. But it is even worse when she sees him with Fitz. It feels wrong to hold Fitz so closely and see Will’s face at the same time. It feels like she has found a magical potion that has allowed her to simultaneously betray them both. She let Will die, and now she is selfishly finding happiness with Fitz, and yet she cannot be with Fitz as fully as he wants her to, because she is still thinking about Will.

She tries to run from him. She sits in rooms under bright white lights. When every corner of the room is lit, she doesn’t see him. When she sneaks onto the roof with Fitz to feel the sun on her skin, she doesn’t see him then either. Jemma doesn’t know when she realizes it, but suddenly she is aware that she cannot see him properly in the light, because on a sunless planet, she had never truly seen every dimension of his face illuminated. She doesn’t go to the rooftop with Fitz anymore after that.

No one talks about Will. No one seems to care very much, and Jemma knows they never knew him like she did, but she still finds herself angry. She wants so badly for them to care even a little. She wouldn’t be alive without him, and now she is forced to continue living without him, and the world continues to turn as if this weren’t a direct contradiction. She doesn’t share her anger or her grief. She thinks talking about it wouldn’t make anyone magically care about Will, and she would never bother Fitz with this again. Their relationship is good, but it’s still fragile.

But when Jemma is tired of nighttime and shadows and nightmares, she gets hammered for the first time in over a year. Bobbi takes her away and dissects her until she is all open and messy. Jemma talks about the torture she endured and the fear she felt. She talks about the inhumans and how she must be completely undeserving of any of Fitz’s kindness. Bobbi listens, and she doesn’t contradict any of the things Jemma says, which Jemma actually finds to be a relief.

“I keep waiting for it to hit me. I know it’s coming. I locked it away, but it’s been leaking out, and I’m waiting for the lock to break.” Bobbi doesn’t comment. She waits and nurses her beer, and Jemma tries to find her words again. She is good at words like hypertonic and amalgam and chromatography, but she is bad with words that have emotion. “I’m waiting for it to hit me- that I’m the reason so many people died. I know it happened, but I don’t feel it all the way. And when it hits, I think I’ll die.”

Bobbi laughs a little, and Jemma is confused, but she doesn’t have it in her to be offended. “That’s a bit sad… if all those people died for you, and that’s how you go.” Jemma makes a noise of indignation, so Bobbi continues. “A lot of deaths can be traced back to me- deaths of good people- people like Will. I know how that guilt feels… But then I think there’s a reason I’m alive when they’re not.”

“Are you religious?”

“Not really. It’s not fate that I’m talking about. Will gave his life for yours Jemma. That’s why you’re here. Don’t waste it.”

Jemma feels the lock pop open, and the gentle void that occupied her mind is now filled. She talks about Will then. She tells Bobbi all the things she wishes the others could have seen if they met him. She begs Bobbi to remember him in the way he deserves to be remembered.

“Would you have fallen in love with him if you knew him here? On Earth?” Bobbi asks.

“Probably not,” Jemma says. She means it too. She doesn’t know how they would ever meet, and if they should meet, if she would even like him. She knows she wouldn’t have fallen in love with him if it weren’t for Maveth, but she also knows that doesn’t change the fact that she did love him. Despite the awful circumstances that led to it all, she did love him entirely. She believed that she would spend the rest of her life with him, and she knows that he would have made her happy if that were the case. She knows that she does not regret loving him.

In the wake of this revelation, Jemma sees Will less. She doesn’t see his face lurking in the shadows. She sees him still sometimes in her dreams, hears his voice and feels his hands. It’s not the same type of ghost that haunts her as before. It’s less of a ghost of Will and more of a ghost of their love. It takes on its own consciousness, and Jemma thinks this ghost will haunt her for the rest of her life, and if that is the case, she is not afraid.

When she sees Fitz the next morning, trying to pass her an aspirin as subtly as possible with Coulson in the same room, she thinks she is ready to give birth to a new ghost.

-

When she kisses him in his room, she is certain she wants it. She’s thought about it too much to not be absolutely sure that she wants it. She tells Fitz as much, because she’s making progress. She’s learning to say things- feelings- aloud. She wants him, and it’s a terrifying thing, because she’s spent too much of her time this year convincing herself that she should have anything but him. She still hears it now. She hears it like a whispered fortune, telling her of the inevitable future where she sends Fitz crashing down like a meteorite. She’s afraid of it, and she cannot rationalize it. She lets herself go anyways.

Jemma knows, logically, that when she kisses him, she shouldn’t taste salt or sand, because that’s never been what their kisses have tasted like in the past.

She remembers every second they spent at the bottom of the ocean (even as she tried her best to forget in the months afterwards) and she knows that she never pressed her lips to his. The water came afterwards, filling Jemma’s nose and mouth, but she never found sea salt on his tongue. And she knows that when she tastes those grains of sand that that kiss never belonged to Fitz. It belonged to Will. (Regardless of what it was at the end, Jemma knows that in the beginning, when she first kissed Will, she was really wishing it could have been anyone else instead. Maybe Fitz, who she had loved so deeply and thought she could never love again. Maybe no one at all. Maybe she just wished if she kissed him hard and fast enough, she could forget where she was for two seconds.) Jemma knows she shouldn’t taste anything but Fitz. She’s had limited experience in kissing him, but she knows that this- regret and shame and fear of losing- is not what it should taste like, so she presses harder until their kiss is harsh and rough and she looks for him.

She finds him again in a hotel room in Bucharest.

It feels just like she expected it to. It feels like happiness. She is so happy to finally be with Fitz in the way she was meant to be- in a way that felt so perfectly instinctual and natural and right. It feels like hope. It’s almost wrong to feel so hopeful when so much has gone wrong in the past 24 hours, but when she kisses Fitz, she’s more convinced that she’ll be happy forever than she has ever been. It feels like safety. It feels like a hand reaching out and bringing her home.

Jemma wants to last in that moment forever, but she knows that she can’t. They have to return to work, and Daisy is in trouble. Jemma’s still grappling with her guilt, and she doesn’t want to carry the weight of another life, but above that, she loves Daisy like a sister. Jemma’s aware that Daisy is probably more capable than her in many ways, but Jemma is nothing if not a scientist. She spends hours in the lab and works to find a cure.

She hits wall after wall. There’s no way to test the serum, and once it is tested (against Jemma’s advisement) it doesn’t work. Jemma feels the disappointment in all of them- especially Coulson and Lincoln. A part of her feels for Lincoln, but a part of her feels for Daisy more. She knows what it feels like to watch the people she cares about throw themselves in harm’s way in the name of love. She knows that if Lincoln doesn’t survive the next trial, the weight Daisy will carry will be unbearable.

So she refuses (not that she needed convincing) to essentially use Lincoln as a lab rat. Jemma tries to find a solution on her own, but there is no way to test a serum and be sure it will work. She wants to return to that new, absolute state of happiness that had characterized the beginning of their relationship, and she tells herself that she will as soon as she figures out how to save Daisy or kill Hive.

In the meantime, she returns to the lab and studies blood samples and dead bodies and biology. Jemma is confident in her intelligence before she is confident in anything else, but she’s doing something that has never been done before. She has limited resources, barely any concrete details, and no way to actually test her theories.

When Mack comes back with his bones shattered, Fitz tells her, “You might not be able to fix her. You know that?” Jemma thinks he’s being the opposite of a supportive boyfriend, and when she tells him as much, he looks over her notes. “This won’t work. You can’t test all the variations, not with multiple trials either. Maybe the solution isn’t one that you can come up with."

It’s a logical enough assessment, and Jemma has always depended on Fitz to be her consultant, but it still makes her angry to know that Fitz doesn’t believe in her ability to fix this. She should be able to fix anything. A lump in her throat grows and the space behind her eyes burns as she feels that churning, ugly, dark thing grow in her chest. She never used to cry this much, she thinks. “Then what am I good for?” Jemma snaps. She means to say it rhetorically, like she doesn’t really, actually mean that, but Jemma does mean it. She realizes too late that under those circumstances, there was really no way to say it like she didn’t mean it.

She tries to hide her embarrassment, and Fitz watches her until it’s painful. “You know, Jemma,” Fitz whispers it all soft, and Jemma finds his patience and emotional intelligence incredibly irritating and incredibly endearing. “You’re worth more than what you can give to other people.”

She wants to roll her eyes and tease him and say something like “Of course I know that, Fitz,” but she finds herself in a stand still. If she isn’t the brilliant young scientist, Jemma Anne Simmons who could solve any problem, what is she? What was there left to value? What was there left to love? What did Fitz see in her?

“It hurts me knowing that you don’t see how perfect you are.” Jemma’s always hated that word. Perfect. She’s far from perfect as previous evidence suggests, and she doesn’t like that word being used in context with her. When she tells him this he says, “I don’t love you because you’re perfect, Jemma; I think you’re perfect because I love you.” Jemma wonders if it would be rude to smack her very nice and very attractive boyfriend over the head. Literature was never Jemma’s strong suit, and she thinks that the two scenarios Fitz proposed were exactly the same. Fitz just smiles and suggests finding some dinner to eat. She knows it’s a ploy to get her out of the lab, but she follows him anyways.

It’s much later, when she’s bent over her samples and her back aches, and her thoughts are a gentle hum in the back of her head, that she sort of realizes what he means.

She thinks Fitz loves her- her and not some perfected figment of her- because no one knows her like Fitz. He proves it in every action and every exchange. He shows it in his awkwardly flirtatious comments (that shouldn’t work as well as they do) and she sees it in the way his eyes take their time tracking her body when they fall into bed. She thinks no one has known her as well as Fitz has, and she thinks no one will know her and look at her and love her like he does. It’s a terrifying prospect- to be known so well- and Jemma worries that this unwavering love will be the thing that kills him. But it’s also a comfort to know that Fitz knows her and loves her anyways.

It only makes her sympathy more prevalent in the days after Lincoln’s death.

It’s always painful to mourn a loss. They all knew Lincoln, and Jemma connected with him more than Fitz or Coulson had. Even without that connection, Jemma knows it is expected for her to mourn. It’s hard to know that someone with a mind and consciousness has died against their will, and it’s hard to know that she’ll never be able to see him or talk to him or know him anymore. But she also knows that her pain is nothing in comparison to Daisy’s.

(Jemma can’t imagine what she would do if Fitz died for her, but she does know that she would feel nothing but anger at the insinuation that anyone could mourn Fitz the way that she would. It’s an unjustifiable emotion- everyone deserves to mourn any loss no matter how small- but Jemma knows that she would feel it anyways. She would feel nothing but bitterness as she watches other people cry, because she would envy them. She would envy them for their ability to mourn, because she knows that she wouldn’t be able to do that much. She would never be able to mourn and heal from losing half her soul. She thinks Daisy must be stronger than her to be able to carry on.)

Jemma pushes her own pain away and hides it. She only visits it behind closed doors, and the rest of the time, she tries to be solid for Daisy. But there's another angle and another type of grief that Jemma knows. She knows the pain of losing someone she loved and watching the world miraculously keep turning. She knows the pain of watching the world forget the only thing she cared about. It’s a thin line she has to walk to help Daisy. She still hides her own pain, but now she shares Daisy’s.

She postpones their trip to the Seychelles. She talks about it with Fitz so much that she wonders if they’ll ever actually go. It almost feels more like some distant dream- like their Perthshire cottage- a desire that Jemma cannot imagine actually becoming a reality, not under current circumstances anyways. They mention it in passing conversations. Fitz shares a fun fact about the flora and fauna over dinner, and Jemma discusses hotels and deals.

One night Fitz asks her, “Why the Seychelles?” He’s never questioned her choice before, and Jemma is a little surprised. He always seemed so agreeable to the idea.

“The snorkeling,” Jemma whispers. It’s dark in their room, and Jemma is tired. It was another day of slow steps forward- of trying to heal without any clue of what “healed” looks like. Despite this, Fitz laughs.

“That was mean of you,” he whispers back. Their limbs are tangled awkwardly, but it’s comfortable. It’s not the type of intertwining that occurs when they first go to sleep where Jemma rests her head on Fitz’s chest and he curls an arm around her back. It’s more of an organic shape that results from all their twisting and turning and shifting. It’s Fitz’s arm thrown haphazardly over her waist, her left leg caught in between his.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Jemma says. There’s no reason for them to be whispering, but Jemma enjoys the tenderness of it. “Snorkeling is a riveting activity.”

Fitz lets out a huff, and Jemma wishes she could see his pout. “Really though,” he says after a pause of silence. He moves his thumb across the bare skin of her waist where her shirt has ridden up. “The Seychelles. I never thought about it before but… the ocean? Really? Snorkeling?”

Jemma fights her urge to tense up or close herself away from him. She is learning to love Fitz as fully as she possibly can, and that means without the fear. “Well we wouldn’t be that far down. And I like biology, Fitz. I thought that was obvious.”

He moves his hand and pulls her closer to him. It’s such an intentional movement, Jemma thaws. He grabs her hands and warms them up the way he always did when he thought Jemma was being steely around him. The question is about her, Jemma knows. She knows because it took them a while to figure it out. They both had a fear of the ocean and large bodies of water, but Fitz could shower and the idea of stepping in a pool never filled him with enough nausea to make him lose his dinner. It took them a while to figure out why Fitz’s fears seemed to be so different from Jemma’s, but they’re two scientists familiar with scientific design, and it doesn’t take them long to understand that Fitz was never the one who had to swim.

Fitz has his own fears and his own pain and his own grief, but Jemma is the one who had to hold her breath and swim, and it makes absolutely no sense for her to volunteer to return to the sea.

“You could find the biology in a sewer fascinating,” Fitz says, seeing right through her. Jemma loves being seen. It makes her feel so solid and real and loved. “Why the Seychelles?”

Jemma thinks about all the ways she could answer him. It’s less of a linear path that brought her to the Seychelles and more of a singular feeling. It’s a feeling that she had lost for a long time, a feeling that she was intent on ignoring for the rest of her life, and a feeling that had brought her to Fitz despite all her mind’s protests. It’s a simple type of hope, unmarred by fear and hatred and insecurity and guilt. It’s hope as it is.

“I’m trying to be brave.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Thank you so much for reading, and if you enjoyed it please leave a comment or kudos!


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